Tag: Plymouth Argyle

Organisation is the key to many of life’s success, and this has been ably demonstrated than by Plymouth Argyle fans over recent days, in dealing with two potential obstacles to the club’s exit from administration. The starkest issue was highlighted by Ian King on this site on Sunday as rumours began to break of attempts by a former director of the club to disrupt and potentially threaten outright Argyle’s exit from administration, in order to protect personal financial interests. Then there has been the groundswell of opposition to Plymouth City Council’s plans to buy back the freehold to Argyle’s Home Park stadium, a key part of ‘Devon-based entrepreneur’ James Brent’s takeover bid. The latter obstacle remains, but the former obstacle appears to have been dismantled by fans’ campaigning on Sunday and Monday. On September the 29th, club administrators, the P & A Partnership issued a statement confirming “an agreement in principle with the Akkeron Group for the sale of the football club” and a commitment by both sides to “completing the deal next month.” This announcement contained caveats but seemed breathtakingly clear after the mealy-mouthed disingenuousness of the Heaney/BIL era. However, rumours surfaced, as if inspired by the announcement, that one of the former directors was up to something. Among the ‘readers comments’ on the This is Devon website was an unexpected reference to former club vice-chairman Paul Stapleton...

So near, yet so far. The future of Plymouth Argyle seems likely to be thrown into fresh turmoil if rumours that started circulating late yesterday afternoon regarding an attempt on the part of three former directors of the club to buy the mortgage held over its Home Park ground by Lombard North Central PLC. Just over week ago, it seemed as if the future of the club was finally set to look a little brighter. The bid of Bishop International Limited to purchase the ground and pass on ownership to Peter Ridsdale for £1 had collapsed, whilst on the pitch the Fans Reunited Day at Home Park was a great success, with this success being mirrored on the pitch with the team finally registering its first win of the season, against Macclesfield Town. The latest news came from a source described by Chris Webb of the Argyle Fans Trust as “sources … as close to the process as you could possibly get”, and the news is extremely troubling for all supporters of the club. Paul Stapleton was the vice-chairman, company secretary and accountant for the club as it ran up a quite remarkable debt of £17m. As a trustee of the Plymouth Argyle Supporters, Training and Development Trust, he was there and present when this organisation, whose purpose is to promote the training and education of young footballers, lent £330,000 to...

Yesterday in Plymouth, shortly before noon, the BBC ‘understood’ that, Peter Ridsdale “is to step down from involvement with Plymouth Argyle.” I smiled. The statement seemed to explain an odd occurrence earlier that morning. A Plymouth article on the BBC website at half-past-nine referenced a Ridsdale interview for today’s BBC ‘Football Focus’ programme in which he said the takeover would be complete by October 10th. By ten o’clock, the reference to Ridsdale had been excised. And the BBC’s noonday ‘understanding’ appeared to explain why. Five hours later, Peter Ridsdale told us what that really meant. I stopped smiling. I should have known better. Even the words “step down from involvement” should have rung alarm bells in my head. If Ridsdale was to leave Argyle, the BBC would have understood that he “is to leave Plymouth Argyle”? His short-ish statement on Argyle’s official website made no mention whatsoever of stepping down from “involvement.” The closest was “I can confirm that my role as ‘Acting Chairman of Plymouth Argyle Football Club’ on behalf of the Administrator will finish on the completion of James Brent’s takeover.” Well, yes. That is a remarkable statement in that it has Ridsdale’s name attached to it and it is…true; but only because every role at “Plymouth Argyle Football Club on behalf of the Administrator” will “finish on the completion of James Brent’s takeover.” Even if the...

The London Gazette can be a treasure trove of information. The official journal record of the British government contains years and years of official information and one notice, published yesterday, really caught the eye – a winding up order issued against Truro City Football Club Limited. This story, which may yet end up turning out to be a case of much ado about nothing – specific details regarding the amount owed are somewhat thin on the ground at present – will be of particular interest to the supporters of Plymouth Argyle, of course, since the club’s owner, Kevin Heaney, has been at the centre of what is increasingly looking like a failed bid to buy Plymouth’s Home Park, with the former Leeds United chairman Peter Ridsdale being set to take over the running of the club. Perhaps the question that supporters of both Plymouth and Truro will be asking today is that of whether Heaney’s money, which has propelled Truro up from the South-Western League to the Blue Square South over the last few years, has run out, or whether there is more to this story than meets the eye. There was a time when the story of Truro City might have been regarded by some – or even many, perhaps – as a fairytale, but the days of most neutrals standing back and passively admiring the noblesse oblige...

They lost again yesterday, of course, a two-nil reverse at Southend United which left them anchored to the bottom of the entire Football League and this morning, in an act entirely at odds with the slow, long, drawn out procedure of the take-over of Plymouth Argyle, Peter Reid paid the price for his failure as an alchemist with his job. He had been unable to muster a win in League Two following the club’s administration-spurred relegation from League One at the end of last season. There will be some that will argue that there was an air of inevitability about such a decision being taken, but many Plymouth supporters will this afternoon be likely to offer a small thanks to Reid for much of what he has done for their club over the last few months. Whilst Reid has not been successful on the pitch (although he was obviously operating with one hand tied behind his back), it is the way with which he has carried himself away from it which has really impressed. In March, he donated his runners-up medal from the 1986 FA Cup Final in the aid of the club. He was also reported to have paid the club’s heating bill from his own pocket, after supplies ran out in December of last year and to have paid the wages of some youth team players. The...